Can These Commandos Salvage the Afghan War?

U.S. and Romanian Special Forces train Afghan forces in Laghman Province. Photo: David Axe

Part one of a two-part series.

LAGHMAN, Afghanistan — The American Special Forces officer was having what one colleague says was the worst day of his war tour. And that was before the Soviet-made anti-personnel mine packed with 700 ball bearings exploded at his feet.

A weapon like that can turn a man into “pink mist,” the officer says.

It was late September outside the town of Mehtar Lam, in this hilly province just east of Kabul. The officer from the Germany-based 10th Special Forces Group — let’s call him “Tom” — had been leading his patrol of U.S. commandos and Afghan police trainees on the long walk back to base following a disappointing encounter with Taliban fighters in which half of the trainees failed to fight back.

The mine concealed inside the mound was a dud, its main charge decayed by time and neglect. Only a precursor charge went off, resulting in a “pop” sound that sent the officer into a spasm of action. He gave a hand signal that sent his troops running for cover, in case the malfunctioned mine was just the first salvo in complex ambush. “God, please don’t let me fuck up,” he recalls thinking.

But the mine was apparently meant to be a stand-alone attack. Nothing else exploded. No Taliban fighters opened up with machine guns, AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades. Only after realizing this did Tom have the luxury of feeling anything. “My first reaction was anger,” Tom says. Anger not only at his would-be attackers, but also at himself. Walking up to the mine “was a JV [junior varsity] move,” he admits.

Tom’s frustration deepened as he tried to get his Afghan police trainees to learn from the mistake. The tall Special Forces officer, in his late 30s with a shaved head and a thick beard, recalls showing the now-harmless explosive device to one of his best Afghan cops, who would later earn a reputation for charging straight into enemy fire.

The American’s aim was to teach the Afghan to fear explosives, and keep a close watch for them in the future. “But he didn’t get it,” Tom recalls. To the cop, avoiding a bomb blast isn’t a function of superior tactics or, failing that, luck born of the device’s long neglect by insurgent fighters. No, the troops’ lucky escape from the fizzling mine “was a direct representation of the intervention of God,” Tom says.

For six months, Tom and the approximately 18 U.S. and Romanian commandos he leads have struggled to prepare a new, largely unknown style of Afghan police unit — a Provincial Response Company — to begin enforcing some real law and order in Laghman, a violent, Rhode Island-sized province of some 400,000 people.

It’s all part of the international coalition’s evolving plan to turn over all of Afghanistan to local security forces by the end of 2014, steadily withdrawing conventional combat troops while reinforcing the Special Operations Forces — including the U.S. Army’s Green Berets, NATO commando formations, the highly secretive Army Delta Force and U.S. Navy SEALs — that will stay behind.

This “Special Force-ization” of the Afghanistan War is no panacea. Special Forces pride themselves in their ability to work within any culture. They blend in, live off the land, learn the local languages and customs, forge unlikely alliances and adapt, endlessly adapt, in pursuit of subtle strategic goals. “We’re problem-solvers,” Tom says.

But as cultural problems go, Afghanistan is a particularly difficult one for outsiders. Understanding the rugged, landlocked country can be hard, even for highly trained warriors like Tom. A decade into the U.S.-led intervention, the coalition is still learning this important truth.

Tom’s futile lesson in bomb-avoidance was, in the balance, a minor failure — but one indicative of a much deeper problem, one that will continue to shape international efforts in Afghanistan as the conflict enters its new “Special” phase.

“Look at the magnitude of the problem,” he says. “I am not cynical about this, but I recognize the magnitude. Lots of people frame the problem in simplistic terms that are not realistic.”

Among those unrealistic terms: the idea that Afghanistan’s problems can be resolved quickly, and by mere killing. Boosting security in Afghanistan means reinforcing the rule of law. That’s a daunting, long-term process requiring more education and institutional reform than combat, Tom notes.

Fortunately, education and reform in a conflict zone are two of Special Forces’ unique strengths. More and more, the Afghanistan War is a commando war. That can mean high-profile, lethal raids such as the May killing of Osama Bin Laden by U.S. Navy SEALs. More so, it means specialized troops negotiating what is, for many Westerners, a confusing and frustrating culture — all in an effort to help Afghans help themselves. And in a deadly country where dud bombs are the least of the perils.

U.S. Special Forces attack Taliban positions in October, 2001. Photo: U.S. Army

From Guerrillas to Guerrilla-Fighters

Commandos have been on the Afghanistan war’s front lines since the start.

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, in the homes of Special Forces soldiers all over the U.S. and Europe, phones were ringing. Tom was at his then-girlfriend’s house in Washington, D.C., sleeping off the accumulated fatigue of a long peacetime deployment. He hung up the phone without answering.

Then his girlfriend, a government employee, called to say “they” were attacking New York. “They blew up the State Department!” she kept saying, according to Tom. He had to re-assure her that, whatever was happening, it was certainly not a nuclear war. Driving to pick her up, Tom saw smoke billowing from the Pentagon.

Everything about the war changed, except that U.S. Special Forces are still on the ground, working closely with Afghan troops.

Special Forces led America’s response to the 9/11 attacks. Within weeks, a 12-man Green Beret team, led by Tom’s friend Capt. Mitch Nelson, was on the ground practicing one of Special Forces’ unique skills: “unconventional warfare.” That is, organizing local fighters into guerrilla forces and leading them into battle.

Nelson found himself helping an Uzbek warlord named Abdul Rashid Dostum lead 1,500 Northern Alliance cavalry in thundering charges against the Taliban’s much more modern army.

When a senior officer impatiently demanded an update on Nelson’s progress, the sleepless Green Beret testily relayed a now-famous message: “I am advising a man on how to best employ light infantry and horse cavalry in the attack against Taliban T-55s [tanks], mortars, artillery, personnel carriers and machine guns – a tactic which I think became outdated with the invention of the Gatling gun.”

But it worked … for a time. The Taliban collapsed, only to regroup as an insurgency. More than a decade later, Afghan troops have traded their horses for vehicles and machine guns of their own. The Taliban are the ones relying on audacity and clever tactics to even the odds. But one thing hasn’t changed: U.S. Special Forces are still on the ground, still working closely with Afghan troops.

Tom’s roughly 100-strong Provincial Response Company is one of around 20 such units across Afghanistan. The PRCs, formed two years ago, are meant to blend the functions of a big-city American SWAT team and the U.S. Marshal Services.

“They’re smaller but have got more capability to go reinforce other Afghan Uniform Police if the security situation exceeds [the AUPs’] ability to handle it,” Peltier explains. “We also train these guys to do high-risk arrests.”

“The idea is that the provincial chief of police and the prosecutors come together and, if there’s evidence a crime was committed, they will generate a warrant, which the PRC will go and execute,” says Lt. Col. Isaac Peltier, Tom’s commanding officer from the Combined Special Operations Task Force 10.

It doesn’t matter to Peltier whether the perpetrator is a hardcore, foreign Taliban, a Taliban sympathizer from Afghanistan or just someone motivated entirely by greed or revenge. “We’re not so much threat-based,” he says. “We’re encouraging Afghans — at least, the police force we work with — to focus on the criminal aspects and enforce rule of law.”

In focusing on police forces and the rule of law, Green Berets are trying to fight a war without fighting a war. There’s not a lot of intensive combat. Ideally, no one gets killed — although, in practice, there are plenty of bodies. Tom, for his part, doesn’t even like calling what’s going on in Afghanistan a “war.” “What you call a thing imposes a bias,” he says.

Bias is one thing Tom is desperate to avoid.

Man Culture

At 37, Tom is older than most Special Forces team leaders. He owes his relatively advanced age to an unusual and circuitous entry into the Green Berets.

For starters, despite his perfectly neutral, Midwestern accent, Tom was not born in America. He’s a native of London. His family moved to the U.S. when he was still a little boy. He enlisted in the Army as a teenager and joined Special Forces, the first time, as a junior team member — but only after passing the grueling Qualification Course, or “Q Course.” The more-than-yearlong course includes physical-fitness tests, combat exercises and foreign-language training: Russian and French, in Tom’s case.

Feeling unfulfilled, Tom decided to get his officer’s commission and transferred to the Air Force. But flying C-130s didn’t quite do it for him, either. Tom transferred back to the Army, went through the Q Course again and rejoined the Green Berets as an officer. He spent some time as a Special Forces diver and nearly drowned after getting caught in an undertow off the coast of Florida.

Tom doesn’t like calling what’s going on in Afghanistan a ‘war.’

Like many Green Berets, Tom spends most of his time deployed to combat zones. It’s Hell on relationships. Tom’s single, but he keeps a photo of one ex-girlfriend on his bookshelf in his roughly 7-by-7 plywood room at the Special Forces compound in Mehtar Lam. He’s almost dismissive of the photo. But not so his collection of postcards, from friends all over the world. There’s even one postmarked from a research station in Antarctica.

He calls himself a people person but admits he craves solitude. He reads a lot. Business books. A nonfiction account of the rise of hip-hop. History. A smattering of fiction. He asks for book recommendations, offers a few of his own, and has a tendency to “prattle on” — that’s the term he uses — about his latest interest while sipping green tea he makes using a tiny, portable kettle.

Tom never, ever tells war stories … unless you ask. After three or four cups of tea, he might pull up his right pants leg to show you the deep crease left behind by a bullet. He’s more likely to talk about the many friends he’s buried, and show you photos of the memorial services.

He’s critical of his fellow Special Forces who are, he says, too eager to try killing their way out of complex problems. He’s equally critical of the Green Berets’ culture of secrecy. Tom’s determined to keep from the press operational secrets and, per Pentagon rules, his own name and image. He once sent a journalist packing after the nosy scribe walked into a room he’d been told was off-limits.

But in Mehtar Lam Tom welcomes reporters to his compound, talks at length about his goals and methods and swears he’ll be dropping by your place while he’s on leave. “I’ve got a bar tab with your name on it.”

Tom assumed responsibility for the Laghman PRC in August “with trepidation,” he admits. He knew enough about Afghanistan to know how little he truly knew. Even so, he got himself into plenty of trouble. Overhearing the Laghman governor comment on child abuse in the province, Tom says he assumed the governor wanted him to do something about it.

So Tom ordered his PRC trainees to take it easy on the kids in Mehtar Lam. He proudly told the governor what he had done. The Afghan was … mortified. Recounting the conversation, Tom slips into a bad approximation of an Afghan accent. “My friend, you must not do this,” Tom recalls the governor saying. “If a man does not sometimes beat his wife and kids, he will not be respected.”

Tom says he quickly began to appreciate the extent to which Afghanistan is a “man-culture,” big on pride, physical bravado and reputation. Offending that sense of masculinity can be counter-productive — even deadly. Since the war began, no fewer than 70 American troops have died at the hands of their Afghan trainees. Almost all of the killings can be traced to “personal issues,” according to David Sedney, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Afghanistan.

“I’ve seen too many guys disrespecting their Afghans,” Tom’s weapons sergeant says. Re-assessing their instruction, Tom and his teammates drew up a list of guidelines for dealing with police recruits:

1) No aggressive touching during training, however well-intentioned. It looks like bullying by the generally bigger Americans and it builds resentment among Afghan men conditioned to believe they only dole out physical punishment.

2) Don’t cuss at the Afghans. It’s demeaning. Even if they don’t understand the words, they pick up on the tone. Always speak to the trainees respectfully.

3) Congratulate them frequently and individually.

4) Reward them with symbols of their accomplishments. Fresh new uniforms when they graduate training. Patches for their uniforms after making a major arrest.

“Our PRC saw early on that we treated them with respect,” Tom says. That paid dividends in late September when, after several weeks of daily training, Tom and his team took the first batch police out on their first operational patrol.

Afghan forces training in Laghman Province. Photo: David Axe

Cut and Run

The half-dozen Americans and approximately 20 Afghan police walked north from Mehtar Lam. Returning to town the same day, the force “came under fire from 20 to 25 insurgents,” Tom says.

It was a moment of truth for the PRC — and for the Green Berets and their new, more culturally-sensitive training program. Tom admits that unseasoned Afghan troops have a tradition of fleeing when under fire. Expecting a route, the team leader says he was pleasantly surprised that most of his Afghans stood and fought. “They held the line and, in fact, some of them bounded forward.”

The weapons sergeant tells the story slightly differently. He estimates half of the trainees ran from the gunfire. The September skirmish was the worst day of the entire six-month deployment for him, he says. Maybe Tom’s expectations were lower, so his threshold for success was, too.

‘Somebody tackle his ass before he shoots us all!’

On this Tom and his weapons sergeant agree: one police trainee fearlessly advanced on the Taliban ambushers, spraying rounds one-handed from his PKM machine gun. “He must have watched Rambo the night before,” the weapons sergeant says.

Tom was impressed at first, but grew alarmed when the machine gunner started shooting wide of the Taliban. Recalling that the gunner had some vision problems, Tom decided to cut short his little show. “Somebody tackle his ass before he shoots us all,” he ordered. It was a violation of his rule against rough touching, but justified with so many lives at stake.

The Taliban cut and run. The Green Berets and their PRC, having suffered no casualties, regrouped. Tom says he delivered an impromptu “Braveheart speech” and together they headed back to Mehtar Lam.

That’s when Tom blundered into the malfunctioning Soviet mine … and tried and failed to explain to his trainee why the dud explosive was a big deal. Maybe half of Tom’s cops ran. But half didn’t. And the unit can claim to have won that engagement. Overall, the cops’ first patrol was a “unifying experience” for the PRC and their American advisers, Tom says.

But for all their success in honing the training program to better reflect Afghan culture, the Green Berets hadn’t figured out how to bridge the insh’allah gap and get the cops to start thinking tactically, operationally and strategically. Where the PRC had succeeded so far, it could chalk up its success to typical male bravado and the gentle encouragement of the Americans.

That might be fine for a minor firefight. But to secure an entire country against a tenacious insurgency is going to take more than some enthusiastic machine-gunning. It’s going to take some steady, high-end policing within a fair system that adheres to the rule of law. “They’re not there yet,” Peltier says.

“It’s a long-term thing,” Tom seconds. The Pentagon clearly agrees, which is why men like Tom are sticking around even after most U.S. forces depart in 2014. In Afghanistan, Special Forces still have their work cut out for them.

Tomorrow: Tom, his teammates, and their Afghan trainees pursue a wanted man.